Trump DOJ Says It Won’t Investigate Trump DOJ’s Reflecting Pool Vandalism Arrests
Who wouldn't love the chance to clear themselves of misconduct? I guess not the Trump DOJ, which decidedly won't be investigating itself, even though it could cook the books to an acceptable temperature (155-170 internally) to let itself off the hook in the Reflecting Pool prosecution debacle.
It's too many metaphors to be sure, at least in the previous sentence. But here's the thing: the DOJ Inspector General, in theory, could examine these cases, get stonewalled by everyone, and selectively choose to ignore any input from the Department of Interior (which apparently had always known the problem was faulty work rather than vandalism) to deliver a clean bill of (rights violation) health to the DOJ.
Given that it won't, we have to believe the DOJ Inspector General would rather not get involved because the only possible outcome is the end of a career, rather than a dispassionate recounting of the facts on the ground.
The Department of Justice's inspector general has declined to investigate the handling of the criminal case against a former Olympian cleared of accusations that he intentionally damaged the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to a letter Wednesday from the man's lawyers.
The man referred to here is David Hearn - the high-profile former Olympian Trump hoped to see swing from the metaphorical (or maybe not!?) gallows for exposing the shoddiness of the Reflecting Pool revamp Trump was so proud of.
Hearn's case was dismissed by the DOJ, after none other than Trump's hand-picked prosecutor/former Fox personality Jeanine Pirro told the judge the Department of Interior had hidden evidence of flawed repair work from her until after she had already filed charges.
But the DOJ refused to dismiss the case with prejudice. This matters. This meant the DOJ could go after Hearn again if it managed to find a prosecutor more besmitten by Trump than respectful of the law. The court handling this case made this moot by doing the prejudicial dismissal itself, blocking the DOJ from attempting to re-string Hearn up for the same (non) crimes at some point in the future.
It all looked shady as fuck. And that's why people beyond the (falsely) accused David Hearn are demanding an investigation of the DOJ's actions. But the Inspector General isn't going to do it. Instead, Trump-appointee Don Berthiuame [break for relevant content]:
Berthiaume, 51, worked as an attorney in the Justice Department inspector general's office for 10 years until 2020. Among his highest-profile assignments was detailing errors in the use of wiretaps in the federal investigation into alleged ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
*cough* Berthiuame is attempting to have this turfed to the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).
He's not wrong, necessarily. While this would be the sort of thing we might expect a DOJ watchdog to take a look at, it does intersect with what the DOJ OPR is supposed to be perpetually keeping an eye on.
OPR's primary mission is to ensure that Department attorneys perform their duties in accordance with the high professional standards expected of the nation's principal law enforcement agency.
But this buck-passing by Berthiuame looks especially obvious now that we know the DOJ OPR is no longer in the ensuring DOJ attorneys perform their duties in accordance with the law" business. It's now in the business of... going out of business.
Nearly half the workforce at the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has left during Trump's second term, while about 17% have departed the Office of Inspector General, government records show. Many retired or took buyouts the administration offered to shrink the federal workforce, according to the records and three people familiar with the departures.
[...]
The number of new OPR investigations has declined to a 20-year low even as misconduct complaints soar, the review found. The government watchdogs are afraid of doing any watching," said one former DOJ official who left last year.
This is the cowardly Inspector General punting and expecting an office that has low-octane blend of loyalists and people browsing Indeed.com to move forward with something he wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pension plan.
The whole thing is so corrupt and toxic that career government officials won't even wade in when they're given the chance to clear their own oversight subjects of wrongdoing by performing a cursory investigation and selectively releasing supporting documentation. Instead, they're trying to see if anyone else is willing to possibly incur the wrath of an administration that has never met a scapegoat it doesn't like.
If anything, this demonstrates how absolutely fucked the DOJ is, especially in terms of the concept of justice." There's nothing to be had by anyone who isn't part of the president's in-group, or who doesn't care what he does, so long as he's the one doing it.